Trump campaign advertising on channel of pro-Nazi commentator who called Hitler a 'hero'

14 March 2024

Ads for former President Donald Trump's reelection campaign are now appearing on videos posted by a pro-Nazi commentator, according to a new report.

Rolling Stone recently discovered the ads on videos from Stew Peters — a far-right host on the Rumble platform — including on a video in which Peters heaps praise on Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. In that video, Peters said Hitler was a "hero" for burning books, and described the act as "awesome." He then pivoted to a call for burning books in the US out of a desire to strike at the LGBTQ+ community's alleged "degeneracy," which he attributed to the Jewish community.

"I am very humbly asking if you could chip in $5, $10, or even $25," Trump said in the ad that showed up at the beginning of Peters' video, saying he needed viewers' money to run against "crooked" President Joe Biden and to "make America great again, greater than ever before."

Peters' video, which aired on March 8, said America under Biden was suffering from "Weimar conditions" that required "Weimar solutions," which is a reference to Germany prior to the ascendancy of the Nazi Party and Hitler's consolidation of power after he became chancellor in 1933. Peters particularly praised the Nazi raid on the Institute of Sexology in May of 1933, in which Hitler's followers descended upon scholar Mangnus Hirschfield's academic foundation that advocated for LGBT understanding and equality and burned thousands of its books.

"[Nazis would] storm perverted libraries, perverted bookstores, and burn all of their transgender manuals, all of their porn, all of their disgusting literature on leading homosexual lifestyles," Peters said, adding that Nazis "did exactly what reasonable people would do if given the opportunity."

The Trump campaign distanced itself from Peters' channel, telling Rolling Stone that it only spent money to advertise on Rumble — widely known as a platform providing a home for content deemed too extreme for YouTube — and had no say in which videos displayed their advertising.

"We aren’t picking any particular video or channel to run ads on, and we are not given visibility into every single ad that is served during every video," a Trump spokesperson told the outlet. "Rumble is ultimately responsible for the ads that are served on any given video on their platform."

However, Trump's own rhetoric on the campaign trail has been criticized as remarkably similar to Hitler's. In December, he claimed immigrants were "poisoning the blood of our country," and particularly focused his rage on nonwhite immigrants "coming into our country from Africa, from Asia, all over the world." NBC Noted that in Hitler's manifesto, Mein Kampf, he wrote that "all great cultures of the past perished only because the originally creative race died out from blood poisoning."

According to the Guardian, Rumble features a large number of channels hosted by individuals who have been banned or demonetized from YouTube, including Russell Brand (demonetized over sexual assault allegations that he denies) and Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Streamer Kai Cenat also has a presence on Rumble, after his Twitch channel was demonetized over rape allegations.

Pew Research found that the platform — which is partially bankrolled by far-right billionaire investor Peter Thiel — is particularly favored by Republicans, who make up roughly three-fourths of its viewers. Former Fox News host Dan Bongino is also a major Rumble investor, and his own channel has roughly three million subscribers.

"The Center’s study examined 200 prominent accounts on Rumble, selected from those with the most followers. As of June 2022, about eight-in-ten accounts (78%) were individuals while 21% were organizations," Pew wrote. "About a fifth of these prominent Rumble accounts (22%) have been banned or demonetized on other platforms."

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